
(S01E02) "Gnothi Seauton" is Greek for "Know Yourself". I suppose it is analogous to the personal growth going on with each of the characters at this stage.
Projected into their own future, Sarah and Cameron go to one of Sarah's old friends named Enrique while attempting to get new fake id's, in case Sarah wants to get beer later.
Meanwhile, John leaves their safe house in an expression of his teenage, rebellious nature. Where did he go? The mall, of course. I suppose he was interested in the technological advancements in malls between 1999 and 2007.
The show is really starting to kick off its two major sci-fi cliche's. The first being time-travel and the resulting contradictions. The second is the Pinocchio syndrome of the robot trying to be human. I was particularly amused when Summer Glau was trying to imitate the woman leaning against the car.
I like how the action of the series is getting tongue-in-cheek silly, much like Buffy did when that show was in its prime. An example of this when the headless Terminator ripped off a construction worker's head to walk around inconspicuously.
I also found it amusing how Sarah Connor was unaware of what 9/11 was. Isn't it standard operating procedure when waking up in the future to do historical research?
I don't get John Connor as a character. Why search for Charley Dixon, his mother's ex? It really doesn't make sense given the situation they're in. I recognize that this entire show is a fantasy, but in my opinion good television involves people giving realistic reactions to unusual situations.
I'm starting to find the Sarah Connor voice-overs to be annoying and distracting. I recognize that it's a holdover storytelling device from the movies, but still...
The new family pseudonym for the Connor family is Baum. As in L. Frank Baum, the writer of The Wizard of Oz and creator of the Tin Man, the mechanical man with no heart. This series has the subtlety of World War II. Sometimes I wish the series were erudite like an episode of Frasier, but I don't think a family like the Connors would be quoting Keats.
In conclusion, someone asked me the following question: why is it when computers become self-aware in sci-fi, they automatically become evil? Why can't they become accountants or something? I had no answer.















Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
1-14-2008 @ 10:17PM
BC said...
"Why search for Charley Dixon, his mother's ex? It really doesn't make sense given the situation they're in."
1. Only real father figure he's known and liked, besides the T100?
2. When they disappeared, they seem to have left the guy in some heat with the feds?
3. May be concerned about his mother's thinking--she is an ex-mental-patient, after all?
Now, why he went to the house isn't as clear, although he obviously wasn't expecting to be there when Dixon came home. I think he wanted to verify that Charley had an OK life now, but he's a teenager, so his reasoning skills and ability to foresee consequences are suspect.
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1-14-2008 @ 10:22PM
Dan S said...
Is there an option for fox will kill it in the 3rd season? Usually they seem to let shows (arested development/futureama/family guy) go after they've had time to properly bludgeon them.
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1-14-2008 @ 10:29PM
sitruc said...
Quite a few of your recent posts have been a little more negative than normal, Brad. Everything ok? Has watching television and writing reviews made you completely jaded. I think the show has been pretty good for what it is. It's hard for me to understand Terminator fans. I liked the movies, but never got caught up in the horrible logic, plot holes, hypocrisies and inconsistencies, and bad chronology. (Notice I didn't even mention the acting.) This episode had a couple of lighter moments like the Tinman sitting against the car while copying the other girl and John just being a clueless kid. John can be annoying, but he still gets it sometimes. They may be trying too hard with his character, but it's hard to have the show without him this early in the series. This episode probably helped some fans as it did make more connections to the movies. Right now, it's probably the best show on Monday night....
Also, I couldn't help but notice the address of the Apple store - 1337.
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1-15-2008 @ 12:15AM
Tim said...
I agree w/ sitruc, the reviews do seem to be pretty jaded lately. In the review, you ask if it's standard operating procedure to do historical research when you jump into the future. That's 8 years of history...what do you google to get those results?
The bit about the Baum last name had no subtlety? With everything that's going on, I don't think most people realized that it was a play on the Tin Man from Wizard of Oz...especially with so much going on.
1-15-2008 @ 9:03AM
Keith McDuffee said...
Actually, sadly, it was not an Apple store. They were using ... *gasp* ... Vista!
1-15-2008 @ 9:42AM
h8rain said...
I saw the address as well, cheesy, but funny if you get it.
1-14-2008 @ 10:44PM
bruce said...
It's clear these Terminators (all of them) are infinitely dumber than the ones in the movies. Remember in T2 when Arnold said "I see everything."? Well, these terminators clearly do NOT see everything. Maybe the terminators made by Cyberndyne Systems, Inc. were more intelligent than the ones made by whatever ends up making Skynet now. It's at least an explanation. The Cameron robot walks into the room without scanning everyone on the floor to see that one of them was a terminator, waiting in disguise? And since terminators didn't know JC was there or what he looked like, why would the terminator wait on the floor in a room full of dead people, inevitably to be found by cops? Also, it's abundantly clear that these terminators are only willing or able to kill JC via bullets. The terminator, posing as a substitute teacher in the last episode, couldn't just walk over to JC and quickly tear his head off (I think this was pointed out by someone).
I can think of 20 more examples of stupid actions by these TV terminators, who clearly do not "see everything" and don't take the time to scan their situation and the things around them (even though the bad ones are often shown to do their red-screen scans). Can this odd, unknown-model Cameron terminator not scan things around her? Somehow I doubt that JC would send such a robot back in time to protect him if that were the case.
And if the robots were not dumb enough, then there's the TV John Connor. He left the house, went to the mall to play on computers to google himself -- in the future (for him). Didn't even notice the screen behind him showing the entire store what he was looking at. Sales lady will kill him now.
I'm just annoyed. I really think this show could be good, it has potential, but they're causing ther characters to make asinine, unbeliavably stupid decisions. I object.
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1-14-2008 @ 11:48PM
sitruc said...
It can be a little silly and annoying, but a certain amount of belief must be suspended for a sci-fi show and it appears that fans of the movies are strangely having a harder time accepting the realities of the show.
On second thought, maybe shows like the Bionic Woman have made me soft. That show was bad.
1-15-2008 @ 12:40AM
AK Mac said...
I agree 100%! And don't forget, Political Correctness is keeping this show from being the best it can be. A tiny little girl is beyond lame as a terminator....reason #234 why terminator 3 should never have been made! Sorry if everyone is now offended....typical.
Bad writing, (The OC meets Smallville meets Bionic Woman) with semi good acting is going to end this show before the first season is over, mark my words, it won't be back.
The special effects are not enough to help it last. People do not want to see this poorly executed crap, I feel for James Cameron.
1-15-2008 @ 8:34AM
Ras Thavas said...
"And since terminators didn't know JC was there or what he looked like, why would the terminator wait on the floor in a room full of dead people, inevitably to be found by cops?"
He was waiting for the 4th resistance member. Tin girl said there were 4 of them. They briefly showed a glimpse of him with the tattoo on his arm looking through a chain link fence.
I'm still ok with the show. The only nagging question I have is how the terminator head made the time jump.
2-04-2008 @ 9:53PM
jay said...
I agree with EVERYTHING you've said. Great leader of the human resistance... googling himself.. I thought the exact same thing.
1-14-2008 @ 11:31PM
Argus said...
I think stupid decisions are always something which one needs to accept for Sci-Fi shows, but this did push it abit. Cameron couldn't find out whether ID guy was lying for sure or not all of a sudden? I like that there's a sense of humor for the series and its clear the writers aren't trying to make the next Ghost In The Shell, but still... A little sense please.
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1-15-2008 @ 1:50AM
teraph said...
I think Cameron didn't bother to check if he was lying because it is irrelevant. She knows he has snitched in the past. That's enough to be a threat. Cameron job is to protect John, not to give people the benefit of the doubt. This may be a source of conflict between Cameron and Sarah if they debate when it is appropriate to kill people.
1-15-2008 @ 12:05AM
Phish said...
Computers, when self-aware, are percieved as evil because we, as a human race, are absoultely dysfunctional and suicidal. we commit unimaginable horrors to each other (nazis, japs in nanking / china, and thats just recent history).
So its no wonder they would alienate themselves from humans, resulting in an eventual War.
They think logically, we do not.
any alien or outsider would look at us as a force of destructive barbarism, when has the world ever experienced true peace?
is it even possible?
computer says NO.
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1-15-2008 @ 12:47AM
bsgfan2003 said...
Interesting. There is a great deal of negativity in these posts.
I am choosing to view the show as some much needed life in the wasteland of current television.
Perfection? Ah...no, but I'll take what I can get under the circumstances.
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1-15-2008 @ 1:00AM
Joey Geraci said...
All of the unbelievable money that was spend on the special effects, and somebody couldn't have gone over the script a couple more times? Don't get me wrong, it is still better than the dreck Bionic Woman turned into towards the end, but at least that show gave us a kick-ass episode or two in the beginning with Starbuck. This show is really rather ho-hum from the beginning.
Don't give me that, "what do you expect from scifi" crap. Some of the best storytelling in the world has been told by scifi, and there is absolutely no prereq for silliness or bad writing in the genre.
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1-15-2008 @ 1:14AM
PArl said...
Maybe it's because I came in with zero expectations as someone who's seen the Terminator movies, enjoyed them, but never got into that story universe...but I'm really enjoying the episodes. Yeah, there are a few things that don't make sense, but so far I think I'm getting exactly what I expected. A decent show that hopefully will grow into a good show and then..who knows?
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1-15-2008 @ 1:31AM
Matt Denner said...
when the episode ended, i immediately went to the url of the search engine john uses in the episode (lesearch.com). i was hoping for something creative or clever, but it was just the roost of some cybersquatter.
also, i would find it surprising if the first thing the connors did, after being in the future for just a couple of days, was going to the library for historical research. it was amusing, yet totally logical to me, that sarah connor wouldn't know what 9/11 was.
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1-15-2008 @ 1:44AM
YouFaceTheTick said...
Why would she know 9/11? She's been in 2007 for a few days and honestly, unless she listened to Giuliani then 9/11 (thankfully) doesn't come up much anymore.
1-15-2008 @ 1:42AM
YouFaceTheTick said...
"I wish the series were erudite like an episode of Frasier..."
Probably the funniest thing written on TV Squad this year. Pretty much negated the review with that one sentence. Erudite and Frasier? There isn't a character on that show that would even use that word correctly in a sentence.
As for the Terminator series, the jump in quality from episode 1 to 2 is evident. Episode 1 subjected us to nonstop exposition and chase scenes galore. Quick characters, little plot, lots of boom. Hard to sit through that. Really, we almost didn't Tivo Episode 2.
Episode 2 offered us an expansion of Sarah Connors (the only character allowed to be complex and develop in Cameron's two films) but continued to treat John Connors like a raging idiot. From the bratty twerp in T2 on to that wreteched T3 and this series, the various writers refuse to go beyond teen-angst with John Connors. Maybe the writers should spend some time with more complex fictional teens?
Sarah's development and struggles could be fascinating - she's burdened with raising the world's savior by herself - but the series almost makes her a bad ass but overly protective mom. Come on, you've been training the kid for 15 years. By now he knows the robots are real and he should be pretty well versed in what's smart and how to protect himself. It's just not ringing right. Yet the bit of learning she dies of cancer...that struck nicely.
Anything real or interesting (Sarah tossing the robot out the window was amusing until you consider how heavy that thing should be) gets dwarfed by the inane (bratty John, Cameron wants to be human, blah, blah). Sarah Conner Chronicles is still just middling-level television. While not CSI bad, it's not even close to Friday Night Lights good.
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